Tax rate (Civ2)

The tax rate is a mechanic in Civilization II that controls the proportion of  Trade allocated to the three commercial resources ( Taxes,  Science and  Luxuries) by each city in the player's empire. It is accessed from the Kingdom menu or the hotkey shortcut Shift+T. The player's current tax rate is displayed as three numbers next to the treasury on the map screen, listed Tax.Luxuries.Science (x10).

Overview

Example screenshot of the Tax Rate screen.

The tax screen consists of three sliders (one for each provision) that can be adjusted in increments of 10%, to a maximum scale of 100%. Raising or lowering each slider will automatically adjust others to balance; the "Lock" toggle freezes a slider's current value to ease configuration. These rates are instantly applied to the apportionment of  Trade in each city; uneven divisions round to whole numbers.

The tax screen also details the civilization's current government, maintenance costs, gross  Taxes, and  Science production and research time based on the current rates. Most governments cannot assign 100% funding to a single field, and are instead subject to a "maximum rate" as outlined in the following table:

Government	Max. rate (%)
Anarchy  Despotism	60
Monarchy	70
Communism  Fundamentalism  Republic	80
Democracy	100

Note that in addition to a penalty to total science output, Fundamentalism's effective  Science rate is limited to 50%; additional percentages instead provide  Taxes.

Strategy

At the beginning of the game, maximizing  Science spending is a good strategy to obtain initial advances as quickly as possible. Once the player has access to trade units, science spending can be complemented or even supplemented by establishing trade routes that provide lump-sum  Beaker revenue. A player may also opt for minimal Science funding and use espionage units to steal knowledge outright. Once a civilization has acquired all practical technologies (Future Tech #255), further research becomes redundant and the Science sector can be defunded.

The  Tax rate can generally be kept low, so long as maintenance does not exceed income. When taxes are tight, it may be preferable to create  Tax Collector specialists in individual cities, rather than adjusting the tax rate empire-wide; be careful not to reassign citizens working high-Trade tiles, as this may neutralize net Tax income. Conversely, amassing a large treasury enables economic warfare, as improvements and Wonders can be bought outright, and rival units and cities can be bribed to defect.

 Luxury spending becomes more important at higher difficulty levels to address unhappiness, but can otherwise be deferred until the player has strengthened their economy, relying on  Entertainers instead.  Republics and  Democracies will usually require higher Luxury rates to compensate for their removal of martial law, and/or war weariness from deployed units. However, lower absolute Science and Tax rates are counterbalanced by civilian governments'  Trade bonus. Similarly, high Luxury spending will facilitate "We Love the King" Days, which under military governments can increase cities' Trade to civilian levels.

Modding

Government maximum tax rates are largely hard-coded, but  Fundamentalism's handicaps can be configured on Lines 18 and 19 in the @COSMIC section of Rules.txt.

Labels used in the Tax Rate screen are located on Lines 91–93 ("Taxes", "Luxuries", "Science") and 258–60 ("Maximum Rate", "How Shall We Distribute The Wealth", "Lock") under the @LABELS section.

See also

• Tax rate in other games